The Future Conversion of Russia Does Not Indemnify Its Current (and Past) Attacks on Innocent Civilians

Although it had not been my intention to write about the Russian invasion of Ukraine again, the Russian military’s deliberate attacks on civilians have become so numerous and so wanton that I believe it is useful to provide the readers of this website with a brief commentary that runs contrary to what appears to be the “conventional wisdom” among so many traditional Catholics here in the United States America.

First, the Russian hatred of the existence of Ukraine is deep and of centuries long-standing.

Second, Russian nationalists have long desired a Pan-Slavic union under the control of the Russian government and the heretical and schismatic Russian Orthodox Church. As one Ukrainian national said to me recently, “What is taking place is an annihilation of Ukrainian history and culture.”

Third, as was noted in each of the three parts of my “Wars and Rumors of Wars” series, the Russian persecution of Ukrainians, especially Ukrainian Catholics and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is illegal within the Russian Federation, is a well-documented historical a fact. Whether under Czarist, Soviet or Russian Federation direction, the use of well-planned social engineering, including the starvation of ten million Ukrainian peasants, most of whom were Catholic, to depopulate the Catholic population of Ukraine is a well-established fact.

The following is a concise summary of this history of persecution:

The Ukrainian Church is the largest of the eastern rite Churches in union with Rome. They number five million faithful. At the beatification process of the martyr Saint Josaphat, born in Volodymyr, Volyn (which today is in Ukraine) in 1643, whom we must remember is the Church’s official patron saint of unity, Pope Urban VIII uttered these prophetic words: “Oh my Ukrainians, I look to you to convert the East.”

The Stalin Persecution and Genocide

The Ukrainian Catholics, religious and lay, suffered intense persecution from the Russian communists, especially under the cruel dictator Joseph Stalin and his savage enforcer, the “Butcher of Ukraine,” Lazar Moses Kaganovich, chairman of the Soviet Presidium. Stalin’s collectivization of the people’s farms and confiscation of their grain from 1932-1933, led to the forced starvation of ten million Ukrainians. This was done as a punishment for the rise in Ukrainian patriotism and the emergence of a powerful nationalist movement that arose about a decade after the Bolsheviks took over. Kaganovich, who had already spearheaded the murderous purges in Russia, posted armed guards at all the grainaries to prevent the Ukrainian people from access to their own harvest and when starving people tried to reach the border in search of food they were gunned down. The West ignored the crisis, preferring to believe the USSR propaganda that there was a famine. Only one pro-Soviet American reporter, Walter Duranty of the New York Times, was allowed into Ukraine at the time. In that paper he denied the genocide calling it “partial crop failures.” Sometime after receiving the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, he later admitted, according to British Diplomatic Reports, that “as many as ten million” may have perished.

Reasonable estimates put the percentage of murdered Ukrainians in that two-year period at a quarter of the population, roughly ten million. Most of the victims were poor children. When the granaries were re-opened in 1934, the people were reeling in shock and despair. Before the genocide, the Catholic Church was flourishing in Ukraine, or at least it appeared to be. There were many vocations to the religious life, especially in Lviv, Ukraine’s cultural center, where seminaries and monasteries thrived. After and during the horrific two-year ordeal many lost faith in God, but others accepted the chastisement as a purification and the seminaries and convents began to rebound. The suffering under the yoke of Communism was not over, it would last for another sixty-four years (except for the Nazi occupation from 1941-1944), until the nation achieved its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Genocide wasn’t enough, Stalin still wanted absolute control over all of Ukraine. In 1939, he sent his Red Army into western Ukraine; prior to this it was the eastern part of the country that took the brunt of his sadistic brutality. There was now only one major force in his way, the Catholic Church. Half of the Catholics in Ukraine had been deported and dozens of priests executed. The schismatic Orthodox Church, under the Moscow Patriarchate, cooperated with the Communist Party and kept its worship private. The Catholic Church (i.e., the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church) under the authority of the pope continued its mission as mandated by Christ to teach, preach, administer the sacraments wherever needed, and evangelize. In 1939, the order came down from Stalin to intensify the persecution of the Roman Catholic Church in western Ukraine, liquidate it by terror if its leaders could not be bought outright. Everything the Church owned was confiscated — convents, schools, hospitals, the Catholic press, and many Catholic churches were burnt to the ground. It was during the height of the persecution, in 1941, that the Nazis drove the Reds out of Ukraine. With Germany’s defeat in WWII, the communists re-consolidated their hold in Ukraine, half the Catholic clergy were sent to prison and one- fifth were exiled; the schismatic orthodox took over all the Catholic churches and all Church properties were seized by the atheistic state. (Ukrainian Martyrs: Victims of Communist Barbarity.)

Fourth, Vladimir Putin has been committed to the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians in various military operations dating back to his time with the KGB. Consider the information about Putin’s war crimes against innocent civilians provided by a man named John W. Spring, who claims that he had some kind of access to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis:

Although American athletes and spectators were not allowed to attend the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow due to the Soviet or Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1989, I attended the International Geographic Congress of the International Geographical Union or IGU held in Tokyo where I met many Russian counterparts as well as other professional geographers from all over the world. Yevgeny Primakov was one of the unannounced speakers at one of our meetings, who became Prime Minister of the Russian Federation in 1998-1999. But as a geographer, I was not at all impressed with his Soviet rhetoric.

But now the focus is on Vladimir V. Putin, whose grandfather was the cook for Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, who became a Soviet KGB agent under its Director Yuri Andropov. At the 30, Putin served with him when he became President of the Soviet Union during occupation of Afghanistan in 1982 when I learned directly in 1983 from Afghan officials over one million civilians had been murdered by Russians from “arrangements” made through Putin, but that information was never released in the West, especially in the United States. Of course, there are no records of his war crimes against the Afghan people and in 1984 he was assigned to Dresden to work with the East German Stasi that included physical torture of young women and girls with a Russian mental torture known as mind control or brainwashing of individual victims whose behavior remained indefinitely altered with permanent brain damage. He had only contempt for young women and girls whom he considered to be of minimal value.

Unfortunately, this is the diabolical part of his life that has been kept from the public for over 40 years. If I had not attended that meeting as the guest of the former high-ranking Afghan officials, including a Minister of Finance and a UN Ambassador, when representatives from 20/20, Freedom House, Doctors without Borders and others were present, but none of them reported those atrocities caused by Putin. They were only concerned with suppressing truth.

More than 20 years ago when Putin served as Director of the Federal Security Service or FSB and when he later was President of the Russian Federation, I began monitoring his Machiavellian tactics for instigating regional wars by him using Hitler’s strategy of blaming the people in the land he intended to invade for the arson fires and bombings in apartment complexes and theaters being set on orders by him that caused so many deaths.

You were probably unaware of the flight of a Polish President with his family and cabinet aboard a plane trip to Moscow to meet with Putin that exploded in mid-air when over Russian airspace. It was never mentioned in the West.

Although some of you have heard of allegations about radio-active isotopes being used on Russian dissidents living in exile or poison added to tea by flight attendants for reporters or journalists who criticized Putin’s policies as well as his political opponents being murdered on the street or sent to prison, but so few news anchors in America have ever covered any of the aforementioned. (As found in an email entitled: “From the Desk of John W. Spring.”)

Although Mr. Spring is wrong about the Smolensk air disaster in 2010, which some members of some Polish parliamentary committees have concluded was indeed an assassination of Polish officials, did receive a great deal of coverage in the Western press (there is a Wikipedia page devoted to the tragedy with links to contemporaneous news stories--Smolensk air disaster), the other information provided in his email.

Vladimir Putin is amoral. This does not make the globalists of the West who desire to weaken Putin politically within the Russian Federation moral. However, Putin’s amorality by the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians is neither justified nor vitiated by Western provocations or by Western efforts to exploit the deaths of these civilians for their own geopolitical goals, including the raising of energy prices and the creation of artificial food shortages of the sort to inflict even more pain on their unwashed masses than they have caused by means of the plandemic.

Fifth, a military strategy that includes the deliberating targeting of innocent civilians is always prohibited. Although innocent noncombatants have been killed in the course of just wars, their being deliberately targeted is prohibited by the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment. Such targeting is terrorism. Then again, since when has Vladimir Putin cared about the Just War Theory?

Sixth, the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law apply in all circumstances, yes, even during war. We are not Machiavellians. We are Catholics at all times and in all things. Realpolitik has no bearing on a Catholic’s thinking at any time. We must be able to see the prophetic moment in which are living and thus to see past the exigencies of the moment to understand that chastisements do not end by compromising right principles while sin gets promoted with abandon.

Seventh, one of the pretexts used by Vladimir Putin himself, who seems to have disappeared from the public scene in the mode of Yuri Andropov, who had the world’s longest “cold” before he died on February 10, 1984, and Konstantin Chernenko, who had the world’s second longest “cold” before he died on March 10, 1985, is the old Soviet lie of “denazification,” which was the means by which thousands upon thousands of “enemies of the state,” including Catholic bishops and priests, were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured, or executed throughout Eastern Europe in areas under Soviet control.

Well, one Russian lawmaker has said that Poland, most of whose people are devout Catholics with such great devotion to Our Lady’s Most Holy Rosary that they formed a veritable wall of people around the entire Polish border to pray the Rosary in defense of Poland’s territorial integrity on October 7, 2017 (see Polish Catholics Gather at Border for Vast Rosary Prayer Event), could be the next target of the Russian Federation’s “denazification” project that is as yet ongoing in Ukraine:

A Russian lawmaker is warning Friday that recent comments from Poland’s leaders are encouraging Moscow to "put it in first place in the queue for denazification after Ukraine."

Russian State Duma Deputy Oleg Morozov, using language Russia has sought to justify its bloody invasion of Ukraine, made the remark on his Telegram page, according to Russian state media.

"By its statements about Russia as a 'cancer tumor' and about the 'indemnity' that we must pay to Ukraine, Poland encourages us to put it in first place in the queue for denazification after Ukraine," Morozov reportedly wrote.

On Tuesday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote a column for the Telegraph criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin and the propaganda he is spreading about the war in Ukraine.

"Putin’s ‘Russkiy Mir’ ideology is the equivalent of 20th-century communism and Nazism. It is an ideology through which Russia justifies invented rights and privileges for its country," Morawiecki said. "In the name of this ideology Mariupol and dozens of Ukrainian cities were razed as it sent Russian soldiers to war, convinced them of their superiority, and encouraged them to commit inhuman war crimes – the murder, rape and torture of innocent civilians."

We cannot be under any illusions. This is not insanity but a deliberate strategy that has already opened the gates to genocide. ‘Russkiy Mir’ is a cancer which is consuming not only the majority of Russian society, but also poses a deadly threat to the whole of Europe," he added. "Therefore it is not enough to support Ukraine in its military struggle with Russia. We must root out this monstrous new ideology entirely."

In recent comments published by the Russian Pravda website, Polish President Andrzej Duda said "we deeply believe that the international community... will force Russia to pay an indemnity simply to restore what was destroyed in Ukraine."

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has lasted 79 days. (Russian lawmaker warns Poland is next in line for 'denazification after Ukraine'.)

Even though the Russian people will convert as Our Lady promised, Russian governments have long found reasons to persecute Catholics in their own country and elsewhere in the Slavic world, and Poland has been one of their favorite punching bags for centuries upon centuries even if the lawmaker in question was speaking only of his Russian nationalistic hatred for Poles and not for the government of Vladimir Putin.

Eighth, although the government of the United States of America has no vital interests that require it to involve itself in Ukraine, Catholics have a vital interest to pray for the people of Ukraine, especially for the millions of refugees that have been made by Vladimir Putin’s needless war, which has been used by the globalists for their own nefarious purposes after having goaded him into taking the actions that launched Putin’s annihilation of Ukrainian cities, including the City of Mary, Mariupol.

It should break the heart of every Catholic that consecrated religious in Ukraine are suffering because of Vladimir Putin’s aggression against their country:

WOMEN religious in Ukraine are facing Russia’s full-scale invasion of that nation with determined faith and a commitment to service.

Two sisters of the Order of St Basil the Great spoke with CatholicPhilly.com directly from Ukraine via telephone and the messaging app Viber.

“We understand that this is our new mission, to welcome the refugee,” Basilian Sister Lucia Murashko said, whose convent, the monastery of Sts Peter and Paul in Zaporizhzhia, is located about 125 miles from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

Earlier on February 24, when Russian airstrikes began to impact Ukrainian cities, Sister Murashko and her three fellow women religious welcomed two families, with more expected as residents flee the attacks.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has estimated more than 100,000 people have already left their homes in Ukraine since Russian forces openly entered that nation.

The Ukrainian military reports losing at least 40 troops so far, with an unspecified number of civilian casualties.

Yet amid a fast-moving and fluid situation, Sister Murashko said through “a special grace of God” she “feels very calm”.

“We feel peace here,” she said.

“We do not want to move from here; we want to help people and stay with them as long and as much as we can.”

Area residents are grateful for that support, she said, especially one neighbor who is eight months pregnant and advised by her doctor not to travel. (Despite invasion, nuns say they will remain in Ukraine.)

Obviously, the report cited just above was from several months ago. However, I know from Ukrainian nationals living in the United States of America that the situation facing Ukrainian Rite Catholics, who comprise only seven percent of the Ukrainian population at this time, in Ukraine is grim, and it will get a lot of grimmer if the “special operation” of the Russian Federation’s military succeeds in dismembering Ukraine as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is illegal in Russia. Doesn’t this matter to believing Catholics?

None of this is to indemnify the globalists who are using their stooge Volodymyr Zelensky for their own nefarious purposes nor to indemnify Zelensky himself. Of course not.

However, this is to point out that Catholics must think supernaturally, not geopolitically, at all times, and the Russian military’s continued targeting of innocent civilians is as unjust and immoral as the American firebombing of Dresden, Germany, in 1945 and the atomic bombing of the two most Catholics cities in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on, respectively, August 6 and 9, 1945.

Yes, Russia will convert, meaning that Russia is dear to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and to His Most Blessed Mother, who promised this conversion at Fatima once a true pope consecrates Russia to her Immaculate Heart with all the world’s true bishops. The fact of Russia’s future conversion away from the multiple errors of Orthodoxy, which have been listed in past articles on this site, including in part three of “Wars and Rumors of Wars,” can in no way justify its governments’ historic attacks on Catholics and on innocent civilians.

One of the prayers we can pray for the conversion of Russian people to the true Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, is one found in The Raccolta that invokes the intercession of Saint Therese for this intention:

O loving and compassionate Saint, deign to comfort our Russian brethren the victims of a long and cruel persecution of the Christian name; obtain for them perseverance in the faith, progress in the love of God and of their neighbor, and in confidence toward the most holy Mother of God; prepare for them holy priests who shall make reparation for the blasphemies and sacrileges committed against the holy Eucharist; grant that angelic purity, especially in the young, and every Christian virtue may once more flourish amongst them, to the end that this noble people, being delivered from all slavery and returning freely to the one fold entrusted by the loving Heart of the Risen Christ to Saint Peter and his successors, may at length taste the joy of glorifying the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the fellowship of the Catholic Church. (The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, pp. 504-505.)

Most importantly, of course, we must pray daily for our conversion away from our sins and selfishness, from our worldliness, from being distracted by all the incredible events unfolding before our eyes that are chastisements for our sins and those of other men in a world without the benefit of a superabundance of Sanctifying Grace, world that knows not its Divine Redeemer and King nor the tender love and care provided us by His Most Blessed Mother.

The most important warfare taking place at present is the one that adversary and his minions wage at every moment of our lives against us, against our salvation, against our prayer life, against our praying every day for the gift of final penitence and final perseverance, which is why we must arm ourselves with the supernatural weapons of the Holy Faith (frequent Confession and frequent reception of the Holy Eucharist if at all possible in this time of apostasy and betrayal) and to pray Our Lady’s Holy Rosary daily with fervent love for the mysteries contained therein. Our Lady’s Holy Rosary is a spiritual weapon, and her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel is our shield to protect us unto eternity as we fight the daily battle against the wickedness and the snares of the devil.

We do not need tanks and automatic weapons to fight the daily assaults of the devil against our sanctification and salvation. With the help of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, Saint Joseph. Terror of Demons, Saint Michael the Archangel, our own Guardian Angels and Patron Saints, though, we can emerge victorious in the end after a lifetime battle to cast aside the temptations that our invisible enemies seek to use to destroy that which has been won by the inestimable cost of the shedding of Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, our immortal soul.

Three Saints Who Bore Witness to the Necessity of Converting Infidels, Heretics and Sinners

I. Saint Augustine of Canterbury

The lives of so many of the saints who have been raised to the altars by Holy Mother Church are themselves testimony to the integrity and immutability of Catholic doctrine that has been reaffirmed by one true pope after another as circumstances required in the two centuries leading up to the death of our last true pope, Pope Pius XII, on October 9, 1958. Three of Holy Mother Church’s saints whose feasts have been celebrated or commemorated in the past two days are Saint Bede the Venerable, Pope Saint John I and today’s Apostle to England, Saint Augustine of Canterbury. The life of each of these states provide proof of the apostate nature of the conciliar “popes,” their heretical doctrines, their dismissal of both Sacred Tradition as well as Holy Mother Church’s well-established traditions, “innovative” deconstructions of Sacred Scripture, sacrilegious and invalid liturgical rites, corrupt and decade moral theologies and pastoral practices that would even make many of the pagans of ancient Greece and Rome blush.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury was, as noted just above, the Apostle to England, and he was sent there by his fellow Benedictine, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, to evangelize a land whose Catholic Faith, which had been established in Britain by Pope Saint Eleutherius in the Second Century A.D., had been decimated by the invasions by the Angles and the Saxons. The hagiography found in Matins for the Divine Office on the Feast of Saint Augustine of Canterbury provides the account:

Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Apostle of the English, was sent into England by blessed Gregory, and came thither in the year 597. At that time there was in Kent a most mighty king named Ethelbert, whose power reached even to the Humber. When this King had heard wherefore the holy man was come, he received him kindly, and bade him and his companions, who were all monks, to come to his own capital city of Canterbury being struck with astonishment at the perfect blamelessness of their lives, and the power of the heavenly doctrine which they preached, and which God confirmed with signs following. 

They drew nigh to the city in solemn procession, singing the Litany, and bearing before them for their standard a silver cross and a picture of the Lord our Saviour painted on a panel. Hard by the city, upon the east side, there was a Church builded of old time in honour of St. Martin, and wherein the Queen, who was a Christian, was used to pray. There they first began to meet together, to sing, to pray, to celebrate Masses, to preach, and to baptize, until the King was turned to the faith, and the most part of his people were led by his example, (but not his authority,) to take the name of Christian, for he had learnt from his teachers and his own soul's physicians, that men are to be drawn, and not driven to heaven. And now Augustine, being ordained Archbishop of the English and of Britain, lest he should leave untravailed any part of the Lord's vineyard, asked from the Apostolic See a new band of labourers, Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinian.

Having arranged the affairs of his church, Augustine held a synod with the bishops and doctors of the ancient Britons, who had long been at variance with the Roman Church in the celebration of Easter and other rites. But since he could not move them, either by the authority of the apostolic see or by miracles, to put an end to these variations, in a prophetic spirit he foretold their ruin. At length, after having endured many difficulties for Christ, and having become noted for miracles, when he had placed Mellitus in charge of the church of London, Justus of that of Rochester, and Laurence in charge of his own church, he passed to heaven on the 26th day of May, in the reign of Ethelbert, and was buried in the monastery of St. Peter, which thereafter became the burying-place of the bishops of Canterbury and of some kings. The English people honoured his memory with fervent zeal; and the Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII extended his Office and Mass to the universal Church. (Matins, Divine Office, Feast of Saint Augustine of Canterbury.)

Writing before Pope Leo XIII extended the Feast of Saint Augustine of Canterbury to the universal Church and moved it from a concelebration with Saint Philip Neri and Pope Saint Eleutherius, Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., connected Saint Augustine of Canterbury’s reconquering of England for Christ the King and His true Church with rejection of the Holy Faith by the English people after the revolution inaugurated by the lecherous, murderous lout named King Henry VIII and then institutionalized by his daughter by the nefarious Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I:

Four hundred years had scarcely elapsed since the glorious death of Eleutherius, when a second Apostle of Britain ascended from this world, and on this same day, to the abode of eternal bliss. We cannot but be struck by the fact that the names of our two Apostles appear on the Calendar together: it shows us that God has his own special reasons in fixing the day for the death of each one among us. We have more than once noticed these providential coincidences, which form one of the chief characteristics of the liturgical cycle. What a beautiful sight is brought before us to-day, of the first Archbishop of Canterbury, who, after honouring on this day the saintly memory of the holy Pontiff from whom England first received the Gospel, himself ascended into heaven, and shared with Eleutherius the eternity of heaven’s joy! Who would not acknowledge in this, a pledge of he predilection wherewith heaven has favoured this country, which, after centuries of fidelity to the truth, has now for more than three hundred years been an enemy to her own truest glory?

The work begun by Eleutherius had been almost entirely destroyed by the invasion of the Saxons and Angles; so that a new mission, a preaching of the Gospel, had become a necessity. It was Rome that again supplied the want. St. Gregory the Great was the originator of the great design. Had it been permitted hm, he would have taken upon himself the fatigues of the apostolate to our country. He was deeply impressed with the idea that he was to be the spiritual Father of these poor islanders, some of whom he had seen exposed in the market-place of Rome, that they might be sold as slaves. Not being allowed to undertake the work himself, he looked around him for men whom he might send as Apostles to our island. He found them in the Benedictine monastery where he himself had spent several years of his life. There started from Rome forty monks, with Augustine at their head, and they entered England under the standard of the Cross.

Thus the new race that then peopled the island received the faith, as the Britons had previously done, from the hands of a Pope; and monks were their teachers in the science of salvation. The word of Augustine and his companions fructified in this privileged soil. It was some time of course before he could provide the whole nations with instruction; but neither Rome nor the Benedictines abandoned the work thus begun. The few remnants that were still left of the ancient British Christianity joined the new converts; and England merited to be call, for long ages, the ‘Island of Saints.’

The history of St. Augustine’s apostolate in England is of thrilling interest. The landing of the Roman missioners and their marching through the country, to the chant of the Litany; the willing and almost kind welcome given them by king Ethelbert; the influence exercised by his queen Bertha, who was a French-woman and a Catholic, in the establishment of the faith among the Saxons; the baptism of ten thousand neophytes, on Christmas day, and in the bed of a river; the foundation of the metropolitan see of Canterbury, one of the most illustrious Churches of Christendom on account of the holiness and noble doings of its Archbishops; all these admirable episodes of England’s conversion are eloquent proofs of God’s predilection of our dear land. Augustine’s peaceful and gentle character, together with his love of contemplation amidst his arduous missionary labours, gives an additional charm in this magnificent page of the Church’s history. But who can help feeling sad at the thought that a country, favoured as ours has been with such graces should have apostatized from the faith; have repaid with hatred that Rome which made her Christian; and have persecuted with unheard-of-cruelties the Benedictine Order to which she owed so much of her glory? (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, pp. 604-606.)

The legacy of Saint Augustine of Canterbury has been rejected by the people of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. While it is true enough that many of those who apostatized did so out of fear of incurring Henry VIII and his bought-and-paid-for minions, the Protestant Revolution took hold in a short space of time, and it was within that short space of time that the once proudly Catholics of England came to “burn what they once adored.” A furious, passionate hatred for the Catholic Church became, in turn, a “tradition” of its own.

The conciliar “popes” have even spoken of the heretical and schismatic Anglican sect as one of three parts of “the Christian Faith, which some, including Jorge Mario Bergoglio, believe consists of the “Roman Christianity,” “the Reformed Ecclesiastical Communities,” “the Anglican Tradition” and “Orthodoxy.”  Martyrs died to defend the true Faith from the apostasies of the Greeks, the “reformers” (Martin Luther, John Calvin, et al.) and the Anglicans. Their martyrdom is held to be of no account even to the conciliar “popes” who have either “beatified” or “canonized” them.

This is what Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI said to Archlayman Michael Ramsey on March 24, 1966, the Feast of Saint Gabriel the Archangel, when the two first met:

In this city of Rome, from which St. Augustine was sent by St. Gregory to England and there founded the cathedral see of Canterbury, towards which the eyes of all Anglicans now turn as the centre of their Christian Communion, His Holiness Pope Paul VI and His Grace Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, representing the Anglican Communion, have met to exchange fraternal greetings.

At the conclusion of their meeting they give thanks to Almighty God who by the action of the Holy Spirit has in these latter years created a new atmosphere of Christian fellowship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Churches of the Anglican Communion.

This encounter of the 23rd March 1966 marks a new stage in the development of fraternal relations, based upon Christian charity, and of sincere efforts to remove the causes of conflict and to re-establish unity.

In willing obedience to the command of Christ who bade his disciples love one another, they declare that, with His help, they wish to leave in the hands of the God of mercy all that in the past has been opposed to this precept of charity, and that they make their own the mind of the Apostle which he expressed in these words: "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3, 13-14).

They affirm their desire that all those Christians who belong to these two Communions may be animated by these same sentiments of respect, esteem and fraternal love, and in order to help these develop to the full, they intend to inaugurate between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion a serious dialogue which, founded on the Gospels and on the ancient common traditions, may lead to that unity in truth, for which Christ prayed.

The dialogue should include not only theological matters such as Scripture, Tradition and Liturgy, but also matters of practical difficulty felt on either side. His Holiness the Pope and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury are, indeed, aware that serious obstacles stand in the way of a restoration of complete communion of faith and sacramental life; nevertheless, they are of one mind in their determination to promote responsible contacts between their Communions in all those spheres of Church life where collaboration is likely to lead to a greater understanding and a deeper charity, and to strive in common to find solutions for all the great problems that face those who believe in Christ in the world of today.

Through such collaboration, by the grace of God the Father and in the light of the Holy Spirit, may the prayer of Our Lord Jesus Christ for unity among His disciples be brought nearer to fulfilment, and with progress towards unity may there be a strengthening of peace in the world, the peace that only He can grant who gives "the peace that passeth all understanding", together with the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that it may abide with all men for ever. (Common Declaration of Paul the Sick and Layman Arthur Michael Ramsey.)

The cause of the "conflict" between the Anglican sect and the Catholic Church was the declaration that was passed by the English Parliament at the command of King Henry VIII stating that he was the supreme head of the Church in England, thereby permitting him to marry his mistress, the plotting, scheming Anne Boleyn. The Anglican sect started as a result of the carnal lust of a debauched man, Henry Tudor, who was egged on by disciples of the heretic Martin Luther such as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

The false, heretical and schismatic Anglican sect thus has no right from God to exist. While individual adherents of Anglicanism must convert to the true Faith to save their immortal souls, an expressed desire to "re-establish unity" admits that the Anglican sect is a legitimate church that simply lacks what the conciliar revolutionaries call "full communion."

Moreover, Paul The Sick gave his own episcopal ring to Arthur Michael Ramsey, who did not use his first name in most instances, thereby signifying, at least in a de facto manner that he, Ramsey, was a true Successor of the Apostles, and that the principal "difficulty" that had to be overcome was Pope Leo XIII's Apostolicae Curiae, September 15, 1896, that declared Anglican orders null and void. Paul The Sick even went so far as to do something that his predecessor in apostasy, Angelo Roncalli/John XXIII, did not do when he met Ramsey's predecessor, layman Geoffrey Fisher, privately in the Vatican on December 2, 1960: prompt the Anglican layman to give a "joint blessing" with him.

Consider the recollection of an English Catholic seminarian of this this moment in ecumaniacal history:

It was within this context that Archbishop Ramsey arrived in Rome in March 1966 and, together with his colleagues, stayed with us at the English College. He was received as a friend and fellow Christian - a welcome that blew to bits many of the preconceptions of my upbringing.

I received an invitation to the service in the Sistine Chapel at which the pope and the archbishop presided together. You have to imagine the scale of something like this, in which we witnessed the pope in the Sistine Chapel sharing the presiding role with a non-Catholic. And I had a splendid vantage point. As young clerics, some of us enjoyed playing games in the Vatican, such as weaseling our way into the private areas without getting stopped. The way to do this was to walk around as if you owned the place and knew exactly where you were going. On this occasion, I noticed two spare seats in the second row with all the ambassadors, made for them with confidence and sat down.

I recall the end of the service. The pope stepped up to give his blessing, and clearly this part of the ceremony had not been rehearsed. He then signalled to Archbishop Ramsey, who was next to him at the altar, to give the blessing with him. Archbishop Ramsey was a bit nonplussed, and there may have been a language problem in the pope's request. The pope then calmly took hold of Archbishop Ramsey's arm and moved it into a blessing. The message got through!

I remember too the mighty banquet mounted by the Vatican to celebrate the visit at the English College. Even then, we felt caviar was a little "over the top" and something simpler would have reflected better the beautiful simplicity of the service in the Sistine Chapel. However, I suppose it was the Vatican's way of recognising the importance of the meeting.

On 24 March a public service was held at San Paolo fuori le Mura. Again the service was presided over jointly by the pope and the archbishop. But it was the scene outside the church after the service that has stayed in my memory and that of many others who were there at the time. The church was packed. Not only were there the many representatives of the English Catholic and Anglican Churches, but also many Italians, who were keen to see the pope and this unknown English figure with whom the pope was spending a lot of time. I can picture now the scene in the massive courtyard of St Paul's as the pope and the archbishop left the basilica. They found themselves surrounded by thousands of enthusiastic and curious people. As he was about to bid farewell to the archbishop, the pope took off the ring he was wearing and placed it on the archbishop's hand. The pope was then swiftly whisked off into his car to take him back to the Vatican, leaving the archbishop standing alone in the midst of the crowd.

This simple gesture from the pope moved him to tears. Still surrounded by countless local people, the archbishop gave his blessing amid the tears. Later, we all gathered in the English College courtyard to bid farewell to the archbishop and his colleagues. The Senior Student asked the archbishop to give us his blessing. We all knelt down to receive it. As you read this you are probably thinking this was no big deal. But this was 1966 and here were 90 Catholic seminarians in Rome, all in their cassocks, kneeling down to receive the blessing from the Archbishop of Canterbury. I have to tell you we all felt a bit mischievous. Indeed we very much hoped the press would pick up on this event. We wanted our own bishops to see it, since at the time they were not "up to speed" on ecumenism. Like the students of the 1960s we were rebellious, and this felt like our own rebellion. Unfortunately, all the journalists were already at Fiumicino Airport awaiting the archbishop's arrival, so our misdemeanours went unreported.  (Alive At The Dawn?)

The meeting between the heretic Ramsey and the apostate [the conciliar revolutionaries have rejected the Catholic Faith as It has been handed down to us through the centuries of have boasted of a "new church" that can be understood in "light of tradition"] Montini/Paul The Sick occurred as the ecumania was being celebrated by agents of Antichrist everywhere.

Indeed, The Catholic Courier, the diocesan newspaper of the Diocese of Rochester, New York, ran the following story in its Thursday, January 21, 1965, edition:

For the first time in more than 400 years, a Roman Catholic priest is officiating this week at services in St. Andrew's Anglican Cathedral, Rochester, England.

The ancient cathedral, once the seat of the bishopric of St. John Fisher, now patron of the Diocese of Rochester, N.Y., was taken over by the Church of England at the time of the Reformation.

Father John Burke, pastor of the church of St. John Fisher, Rochester, Kent, England, disclosed in a recent letter to Very Rev. Charles J. Lavery, C.S.R., president of St. John Fisher College that he would participate in the history-making event.

"The British hierarchy," he wrote, "have given us permission to accept invitations to take part in non-Eucharistic services in non-Catholic churches, and I have been invited by the Dean of Rochester to preach in the Cathedral Crypt here during the Unity Octave Week Jan. 18 to 25. It will be the first time that a Catholic priest has officiated within these walls since the days of St. John Fisher. It is something that I feel excited about."

Bishop Kearney authorized a diocesan-wide special collection in 1952 which realized $30.000 for the construction and outfitting of a church honoring the martyred St. John Fisher in "Old Rochester," a small town 30 miles from London, which had not had a Catholic church since Henry VIII confiscated the cathedral and put its bishop to death.

Students of St. John Fisher College here purchased a chalice for the new church, which opened in 1953. (The Catholic Church, Thursday, January 21, 1965, p. 1.  See  A Catholic Voice Returns to John Fisher's Liturgy.)

Although this article was written in a spirit of full support for ecumania, it was nonetheless more honest about the causes of the "conflict" between Anglicans and Catholics than was reflected in the "joint declaration" issued after the meeting of Giovanni Montini/Paul The Sick and Arthur Michael Ramsey.

Each of the conciliar “popes” has made a mockery of the martyrdom of the English and Irish martyrs as they have celebrated the “tradition” of a false religious sect that was built on their blood and upon the forcible confiscation, seizure, plundering and destruction of Catholic churches, convents, monasteries, schools, shrines and even cemeteries.

The Catholic Church, however, has spoken about Anglicanism and any attempts to find “common ground” with it as it is a false religion that must cease to exist as its relatively few remaining members, most of which are “low church” and are “baptized pagans” in many instances, convert to her own maternal bosom, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order:

It has been made known to the Apostolic See that some Catholic laymen and ecclesiastics have enrolled in a society to "procure" as they say, the unity of Christianity, established at London in the year 1857, and that already many journalistic articles have been published, which are signed by the names of Catholics approving this society, or which are shown to be the work of churchmen commending this same society.

But certainly, I need not say what the nature of this society is, and whither it is tending; this is easily understood from the articles of the newspaper entitled THE UNION REVIEW, and from that very page on which members are invited and listed. Indeed, formed and directed by Protestants, it is animated by that spirit which expressly avows for example, that the three Christian communions, Roman Catholic, Greekschismatic, and Anglican, however separated and divided from one another, nevertheless with equal right claim for themselves the name Catholic. Admission, therefore, into that society is open to all, wheresoever they may live, Catholics, Greek-schismatics, and Anglicans, under this condition, however, that no one is permitted to raise a question about the various forms of doctrine in which they disagree, and that it is right for each individual to follow with tranquil soul what is acceptable to his own religious creed. Indeed, the society itself indicates to all its members the prayers to be recited, and to the priests the sacrifices to be celebrated according to its own intention: namely, that the said three Christian communions, inasmuch as they, as it is alleged, together now constitute the Catholic Church, may at some time or other unite to form one body. . . .

The foundation on which this society rests is of such a nature that it makes the divine establishment of the Church of no consequence. For, it is wholly in this: that it supposes the true Church of Jesus Christ to be composed partly of the Roman Church scattered and propagated throughout the whole world, partly, indeed, of the schism of Photius, and of the Anglican heresy, to which, as well as to the Roman Church, "there is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism" [cf. Eph. 4:5].

Surely nothing should be preferable to a Catholic man than that schisms and dissensions among Christians be torn out by the roots and that all Christians be "careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" [Eph. 4:3]. . . . But, that the faithful of Christ and the clergy should pray for Christian unity under the leadership of heretics, and, what is worse, according to an intention, polluted and infected as much as possible with heresy, can in no way be tolerated.

The true Church of Jesus Christ was established by divine authority, and is known by a fourfold mark, which we assert in the Creed must be believed; and each one of these marks so clings to the others that it cannot be separated from them; hence it happens that that Church which truly is, and is called Catholic should at the same time shine with the prerogatives of unity, sanctity, and apostolic succession. Therefore, the Catholic Church alone is conspicuous and perfect in the unity of the whole world and of all nations, particularly in that unity whose beginning, root, and unfailing origin are that supreme authority and "higher principality'' of blessed PETER, the prince of the Apostles, and of his successors in the Roman Chair. No other Church is Catholic except the one which, founded on the one PETER, grows into one "body compacted and fitly joined together" [Eph. 4:] in the unity of faith and charity. . . .

Therefore, the faithful should especially shun this London society, because those sympathizing with it favor indifferentism and engender scandal. (Pope Pius IX, The Unity of the Church. From the letter of the Sacred Office to the Bishops of England, September 26, 1864, as found in Henry Denzinger, Enchirdion Symbolorum, thirteenth edition, translated into English by Roy Deferrari and published in 1955 as The Sources of Catholic Dogma, by B. Herder Book Company of St. Louis, Missouri, and London, England, Nos. 1685-168, pp. 428-429.)

What the Holy Office said in 1864 could not be tolerated is now taught by the lords of conciliarism, and it should say something to those in the conciliar structures who believe that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is "Pope Francis" that he does not believe that the "Catholic Church alone is conspicuous and perfect in the unity of the whole world and of all nations." This should help those who see that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is heretic to see beyond that, recognizing much importantly that the heretic Bergoglio is simply the current head of the counterfeit ape of the Catholic Church that teaches doctrines and engages in practices that have been condemned by our true popes with one voice--una voce--from time immemorial.

Dom Prosper Gueranger’s prayer in honor of Saint Augustine of Canterbury speaks directly about the glories of Catholic England before its subsequent decimation by hateful heretics:

O Jesus, our Risen Lord! Thou art the life of nations, as thou art the life of our souls. Thou biddest them know and love and serve thee, for they have been given to thee for thine inheritance.; and at thine own appointed time, each of them made is made thy possession. Our own dear country was one of the earliest to be called; and when on thy Cross thou didst look with mercy on this far off island of the West. In the second Age of thy Church, thou didst send to her the heralds of thy Gospel; and again in the sixth, Augustine, thine Apostle, commissioned by Gregory, thy Vicar, came to teach the way of truth to the new pagan race that had made itself the owner of this highly favoured land.

How glorious dear Jesus, was thy reign in our fatherland! Thou gavest her bishops, doctors, kings, monks, and virgins, whose virtues, and works made the whole the whole world speak of her as the ‘Isle of Saints’; and it is to Augustine, thy discipline herald, that thou wouldst have us attribute the chief part of the honour of so grand a conquest. Long indeed was thy reign over this people, whose faith was lauded throughout the whole world: but alas! An evil hour came, and England rebelled against thee; she would not have thee to reign over her. By her influence, she led other nations the greater part of the truths thou hast revealed to men; she put out the light of faith, and substituted in its place of principles of private judgment, which mad rage of her heresy, she trampled beneath her feet and burned the relics of the Saints, who were her grandest glory; she annihilated the Monastic Order, to which we owed her knowledge of the Christian faith, she was drunk with the blood of the martyrs; she encouraged apostasy, and punished adhesion to the ancient faith as the greatest of crimes. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, p. 611.)

The same thing has happened within the counterfeit church of conciliarism, of course. The mad rage of heresy has caused the conciliar revolutionaries to trample everything evocative of Catholic Faith, Worship and Morals underfoot and to quite literally burn and smash Catholic altars and statues and to disparage Catholic Tradition as composed of little other than mythology and superstition. The conciliar revolutionaries have committed and encouraged apostasy, and they do indeed still punish adhesion to “the ancient faith as the greatest of crimes.”

Returning to Dom Prosper Gueranger’s prayer in honor of Saint Augustine of Canterbury:

By a just judgment of God she has become a worshipper of material prosperity. Her wealth, her fleet, and her colonies—these are her idols, and she would awe the rest of the world by the power they give her. But the Lord will in his own time overthrow this colossus of power and riches; and as it was in times past, when the mightiest of kingdoms was destroyed by a stone which struck it on its feet of clay, so will people be amazed, when the time of retribution comes, to find how easily the greatest of modern nations was conquered and humbled. England no longer forms a part of thy kingdom, O Jesus! She separated herself from it, by breaking the bond that had held her so long in union with thy Church. Thou hast patiently waited for her return; yet she returns not. Her prosperity is a scandal to the weak; so that her own best and most devoted children feel that her chastisement will be of the severest that thy justice can inflict. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, p. 611.)

This describes the condition of the United States of America from its very inceptions as the first country in the history of the world to have no officially recognized state religion. Materialism is the true god of the United States of America, and paganism, which is ultimate fruit of all heresy, is rampant in the United Kingdom, the United States of American and elsewhere in the so-called “civilized” world in which there so many state-sponsored sins against each of the Ten Commandments.

Although Dom Prosper Gueranger had great hopes for England at a time when many Anglicans such as Father Frederick William Faber, Henry Edward Cardinal Manning and John Henry Cardinal Newman, were converting to the true Church, hopes that did not materialize beyond the immediate impact of the Oxford Movement, mainly because of the First World War and the subsequent push in favor of false ecumenism that wound up hijacking the Abbot of Solesmes own Liturgical Movement:

Meanwhile, thy mercy, O Jesus, is winning over thousands of her people to the truth, and their love of it seems fervent in proportion to their having been long deprived of its beautiful light. Thou hast created a new people in her very midst, and each year, the number is increasing. Cease not thy merciful worldlings; that thus these faithful ones may once more draw down upon our country the blessing she forfeited when she rebelled against thy Church.

Thy mission, then, O holy Apostle Augustine! is not yet over. The number of the elect is not filled up; and our Lord is gleaning some of these from amidst the tares that cover the land of thy laving labours. May thine intercession obtain for her children those graces which can enlighten the mind and convert the heart. May it remove their prejudices, and give them to see that the Spouse of Jesus is but One, as he himself calls her, that the faith of Gregory and Augustine is still the faith of the Catholic Church at this day; and that three hundred years’ possession could never give heresy any claim to a country which was led astray by seduction and violence, and which has retained so many traces of ancient and deep-rooted Catholicity. (p. 612.)

This is a prayer that is appropriate to pray for the entire Catholic world now, which is replete with [mostly] faux clergy and many members of the laity who, having no memory of the authentic Catholic Church and having been taught to accept false history as the truth about a “past” that is best forgotten and disparaged, are full-throated revolutionaries in their own right. Little by little, though, what is true of all heretical sects is proving true of the conciliar sect as the numbers of its practicing adherents keeps dwindling more and more in the “developed world” while places like Poland and Nigeria provide fertile ground for true Catholic clergy to explain the necessity of abandoning the conciliar cult, which is offensive cult and will collapse of the weight of its own apostasies, heresies, blasphemies and sacrileges sooner or later within the Providence of God.

II. Saint Bede the Venerable

Ah, but those us who are noble monolinguists (that is, we speak only English, and some of us do that very barely) not only have the holy example of Saint Augustine of Canterbury to remain steadfast in the Holy Faith, we have the example as well as Saint Bede the Venerable, a Doctor of Holy Mother Church, whose defense of the Faith against heresy and all corruption was described the great defender of the integrity of the Faith, Dom Prosper Gueranger:

The blessing given by Our Lord as he ascended not heaven has revealed its power in the most distant pagan lands, and during these days in the liturgical cycle bears witness to a concentration of graces upon the west of Europe.

The band of missionaries begged of Pope Eleutherius by the British king Lucius has been followed by the apostolate of Augustine, the envoy of Gregory the Great, and to-day, as though impatient to justify the lavish generosity of heaven, England brings forward her illustrious son, the Venerable Bede. This humble monk, whose life was spent in the praise of God, sought his divine Master in nature and in history, but above all in holy Scripture, which he studied with a loving attention and fidelity to tradition. He who was ever a disciple of the ancients, takes his place to-day among his masters as a Father and Doctor of the Church.

He thus sums up his own life: ‘I am priest of the monastery of the Apostles Peter and Paul. I was born on their land, and ever since my seventh year I have always lived in the house, observing the Rule, singing day by day in their church, and making it my delight to learn to teach or to write. Since I was made a priest, I have written commentaries on the holy Scripture for myself and my brethren, using the words of our venerated Fathers and following their method of interpretation. And, now, good Jesus, I beseech thee, thou who has given me in thy mercy to drink of the sweetness of thy word, grant me now to attain to the source, the fount of wisdom, and to gaze upon thee for ever and ever.’

The holy death of the servant of God was one of the most precious lessons he ever left to his disciples. His last sickness lasted fifty days, and he spent them, like the rest of his life, in singing the psalms and in teaching. As the Feast of the Ascension drew near, he repeated over and over again with tears of joy the Antiphon: ‘O king of glory, who has ascended triumphantly above the heavens, leave us not orphans, but send us the promise of the Father, the Spirit of truth.’ He said to his disciples in the words of St. Ambrose: ‘I have not lived in such a sort a to be ashamed to live with you, but I am not afraid to die, for we have a good Master.’ Then, returning to his translation of the Gospel of St. John and a work, which he had begun, on St. Isidore, he would say: ‘I do not wish my disciples to be hindered after my death by error nor to lose the fruit of their studies.’

On Tuesday before the Ascension he grew worse, and it was evident that the end was near. He was full of joy and spent the day in dictating and the night in prayers of thanksgiving. The dawn of Wednesday morning found him urging his disciples to hurry on their work. At the hour of Terce they left him to take part in the procession made on that day with the relics of the saints. One of them, a child, who stayed with him, said: ‘Dear master, there is but one chapter left; hast thou strength for it?’ ‘It is easy,’ he answered with a smile: ‘take thy pen, cut it and write—but make haste.’ At the hour of None, he sent for the priests of the monastery and gave them little presents, begging them to remember him at the altar. All wept. But he was full of joy, saying: ‘It is time for me, if it so please my Creator, to return to him who made me out of nothing, when as yet I was not. My sweet Judge has well ordered my life, and now the time of dissolution is at hand. I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ. Yea, my soul longs to see Christ my king in his beauty.’

So did he pass this last day. Then came the touching dialogue with Wilbert, the child mentioned above: ‘Dear master, there is yet one sentence more.’ ‘Write quickly.’ After a moment: ‘It is finished,’ said the child. ‘Thou sayest well,’ replied the blessed man. ‘It is finished. Take my head in thy hands and support me over against the Oratory, for it is a great joy to me to see myself against that holy place where I have so often prayed.’ They had laid him on the floor his cell. He said: ‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,’ and when he had named the Holy Ghost, he yielded up his soul.

The following account of this holy monk is given in the Breviary. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, pp. 613-615.)

Bede, a priest, was born at Jarrow, on the borders of England and Scotland. At the age of seven years he was placed under the care of holy Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, to be educated. Thereafter he became a monk, and so ordered his life that, whilst he should devote himself wholly to the study of the sciences and of doctrine, he might in nothing relax the discipline of his Order. There was no branch of learning in which he was not most thoroughly versed, but his chief care was the study of Holy Scriptures; and that he might the better understand them he acquired a knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew tongues. When he was thirty years of age he was ordained priest at the command of his Abbot, and immediately, on the advice of Acca, Bishop of Hexham, undertook the work of expounding the Sacred Books. In his interpretations he so strictly adhered to the teaching of the holy Fathers that he would advance nothing which was not approved by their judgment, nay, had the warrant of their very words. He ever hated sloth, and by habitually passing from reading to prayer, and in turn from prayer to reading, he so inflamed his soul that often amid his reading and teaching he was bathed in tears. Lest also his mind should be distracted by the cares of transitory things, he never would take the office of Abbot when it was offered to him.

The name of Bede soon became so famous for learning and piety that St. Sergius the Pope thought of calling him to Rome, where, certainly, he might have helped to solve the very difficult questions which had then arisen concerning sacred things. He wrote many books for the bettering of the lives of the faithful, and defending and extending of the faith. By those he gained everywhere such a reputation that the holy martyr Bishop Boniface styled him a Light of the Church; Lanfranc called him The Teacher of the English, and the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle The Admirable Doctor. But as his writings were publicly read in the churches during his life, and as it was not allowable to call him already a saint, they named him The Venerable, a title which in all times after has remained peculiarly his. The power of his teaching was the greater also, in that it was attested by a holy life and the graces of religious observance. In this way, by his earnestness and example, his disciples, who were many and distinguished, were made eminent, not only in letters and the sciences, but in personal holiness.

Broken at length by age and labour, he was seized by a grievous illness. Though he suffered under it for more than seven weeks, he ceased not from his prayers and his interpreting of the Scriptures; for at that time he was turning the Gospel of John into English for the use of his people. But when, on the Eve of the Ascension, he perceived that death was coming upon him, he desired to be fortified with the last sacraments of the Church: then, after he had embraced his companions, and was laid on a piece of sackcloth on the ground, he repeated the words, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, and fell asleep in the Lord. His body, very sweet, as it is related, breathing sweet odour, was buried in the monastery of Jarrow, and afterwards was translated to Durham with the relics of St. Cuthbert. Bede, who was already a Doctor among the Benedictines, and in other religious Orders, and venerated in certain dioceses, was declared by Pope Leo XIII., after consulting with the Congregation of Sacred Rites, to be a Doctor of the universal Church; and the Mass and Office for Doctors was ordered to be recited by all on his feast-day. (Matins, Divine Office, Feast of Saint Bede the Venerable.)

Once again, Dom Prosper Gueranger, mindful of the forces at work in the world in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, took pen to paper to connect the life of Saint Bede the Venerable to the events of his own day that are even more pronounced in our own:

‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost’ is the hymn of eternity. Before the creation of angels and of man, God, in the concert of the three divine Persons, sufficed for his own praise, and of this praise was adequate, infinite and perfect, like the divinity. This was only praise worthy of God. However magnificently the world may hymn its Creator n the thousand voices of nature, its praise is always below the divine Object. But, in the designs of God, creation was on day to send up to heaven an echo of that melody which is threefold and yet one, for the Word was to take flesh, through the operation of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of Mary, and was to be Son of creation fully and perfectly re-echoed the adorable harmonies once known only to the blessed Trinity. Since that day a man who has understanding finds his perfection in such conformity to the Son of Mary, that he may be one with the Son of God in the divine concert wherein God is glorified.

This, O Bede, was thy life, for understanding was given thee. It was fitting that thy last breath should be spent in that song of long which had filled thy mortal life, and that thus thou shouldst be spent in that song of love which had filled thy mortal life, and that thus shouldst enter at once into a glorious and blessed eternity. May we profit by that supreme lesson, which thus sums up all the teaching of thy grand and simple life!

Glory be to the almighty and merciful Trinity! These words form the close of the cycle of the mysteries which terminate at this time in the glorification of the Father, our sovereign Lord, by the triumph of the Son our Redeemer, and the inauguration of the reign of the Holy Ghost, our sanctifier. How splendid were the triumph of the Son and the reign of the Holy Ghost in the Isle of Saints in the days when Albion, twice given by Rome to Christ, shone like a priceless jewel in the diadem of the Spouse! O thou were wast the teacher of the English in the days of their fidelity, do not disappoint the hopes of the Supreme Pontiff, who has in our days extended thy cult to the Universal Church; but rekindle in the hearts of thy countrymen their former love for the Mother of all mankind. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, pp. 617-618.)

We could spend a lifetime reading and meditating upon the works of Saint Bede the Venerable, but of particular note to us should be his devotion to Our Lady and his defense of the dating of Easter that Jorge Mario Bergoglio believes can be “fixed,” placing the latter in full league the heretics Saint Bede himself combatted as described by Saint Cuthbert:

“With those who have wandered form the unity of the Catholic faith, either through not celebrating Easter at the proper time or through evil living, you are to have no dealings. Never forget that if you should ever be forced to make the choice of two evils I would prefer that you left the island, taking my bones with you, than you should be a party to wickedness on any pretext whatsoever, bending your necks to the yoke of schism. Strive most diligently to learn the catholic statutes of the fathers and put them into practice. Make it your special care to carry out those rules of the monastic life which God in His divine mercy has seen fit to give you through my ministry. I know that, though some may see that my teachings are not to be easily dismissed.” (Saint Cuthbert, as quoted by The Venerable Bede, The Life of Cuthbert. The Age of Bede, translated by J. F. Webb and edited with an introduction by D. H. Farmer, Penguin Books, published in 1965 and reprinted with revisions in 1988 and 1998, p. 95.) 

III. Pope Saint John I

Saint Bede the Venerable shares his feast day with a pope, Saint John I, who was the victim of a pagan emperor who seethed with as much hatred for the true Faith as the Arian heretics that he, Pope Saint John I, fought against as he demonstrated his own steadfastness in the midst of persecution:

The palm of martyrdom was won by this holy Pope, not in a victory over a pagan persecutor, but in king. But this king was a heretic, and therefore an enemy of Pontiff that was zealous for the triumph of the true faith. The state of Christ’s Vicar here on earth is a state of combat; and it frequently happens that a Pope is veritably a martyr, without having shed his blood. St. John I, whom we honour to-day, was not slain by the sword; a loathsome dungeon was the instrument of his martyrdom; but there are many Popes who are now in heaven with him, martyrs like himself, who never passed a day in prison or in chains: the Vatican was their Calvary. They conquered, yet fell in the struggle with so little appearance of victory, that heaven had to take up the defence of their reputation, as was the case with the angelic Pontiff of the eighteenth century, Clement XIII.

The Saint of to-day teaches us, by his conduct, what should be the sentiment of every worthy member of the Church. He teaches us that we should never make a compromise with heresy, nor approve the measures taken by worldly policy for securing what it calls the rights of heresy. If the past ages aided by the religious indifference of Governments, have introduced the toleration of all religions, or even the principle that ‘all religions are to be treated alike by the state,’ let us, if we will, put up with this latitudinarianism, and be glad to see that the Church, in virtue of it, is guaranteed from legal persecution; but as Catholics, we can never look upon it as an absolute good. Whatever may be the circumstances in which Providence has placed us, we are bound to conform our views to the principles of our holy faith, and to the infallible teaching and practice of the Church—out of which, there is but contradiction, danger and infidelity. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II,pp. 619-620.)

This has a practical application in our own day as it reminds of the fact that the conciliar revolutionaries have made every compromise imaginable with heresy and have defended its “rights” in civil society under the banner now of “diversity” and “respect” for all falsehoods, including those that deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that mock Him, His Blessed Mother, His Holy Catholic Church and the true liturgical rites He authorized her to institute in order to effect our sanctification and salvation.

Moreover, Dom Prosper Gueranger’s careful distinction between realizing the limitations imposed by the civil state’s imposition of “religious liberty” without ever once looking upon modern conditions as “an absolute good” as we must “conform our views to the principles of our holy faith, and to the infallible practice of the Church—out of which, there is but contradiction, danger and infidelity.”

It is not the English Way or the American Way or the “Conservative Cause” or anything else. It is Catholicism. Nothing else. And the conciliar revolutionaries themselves are the very embodiments of contradiction, danger and infidelity” as they embrace as an “absolute good” the very heresy of religious liberty that treats the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity in the Virginal and Immaculate Womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, as a matter of complete indifference, if not a contempt that results in overt castigation and persecution of those who refuse to be silent about Christ the King and His true Catholic Church.

Here is the liturgical account of the life of Pope Saint John I:

John, by birth a Tuscan, governed the Church during the reign of Emperor Justin the Elder. He undertook a journey to Constantinople, in order to solicit the Emperor’s protection against the heretical king Theodoric, who was persecuting the faithful of Italy. God honoured the Pontiff, during this journey by several miracles. When about to visit Corinth, a certain nobleman lent him a horse, which he kept for his wife’s use, on account of its being so gentle. When the Pontiff afterwards returned, and gave the horse back to the nobleman, it was no longer a tame creature as before; but, as often as its mistress attempted to ride it, would snort and prance, and throw her from its back, as though it scorned to bear a woman’s weight, after it had carried the Vicar of Christ. The therefore gave the horse to the Pontiff. But a greater miracle was that which happened at Constantinople. Near the Golden Gate, and in the presence of an immense concourse of people, who had assembled there together with the Emperor to show honour to the Pontiff, he restored sight to a blind man. The Emperor also prostrated himself before him, out of a sentiment of veneration. Having arranged matters with the Emperor, he returned to Italy, and immediately addressed a letter to all its bishops, commanding them to consecrate the churches of the Arians, that they might be used for Catholic services. He added these words: ‘For, when at Constantinople, for the interests of the Catholic religion and on account of king Theodoric, we consecrated all the Arian churches we could find in that country, and made them Catholic.’ The body of St. John was taken from Ravenna to Rome, and buried in the Basilica of Saint Peter. (Matins, Hagiography of Pope Saint John I, Divine Office, May 27.)

The following prayer, composed, obviously by Dom Prosper Gueranger, teaches two important lessons: 1) that we must not view the world through as naturalists and thus be agitated by the twists and turns of the latest sideshows devised by the forces of hell to keep us away from prayer and spiritual reading; and 2) that we must “realize what divine truth is, and how error can never create prescription against her rights”:

Thy fair palm, O holy Pontiff, was the reward of proclaiming the spotless holiness of the Church of Christ. She is the glorious Church, as St. Paul calls her, having neither spot nor wrinkle; and, for that very reason she can never consent to yield heresy any given her by her divine Lord. Nowadays, men form their calculations on the interests of this passing world and are resolved to regulate society independently of all social order, as well as all truth. They have deprived the Church of her external constitution and influence; and at the same time, they give encouragement to the sect that have rebelled against her. O holy Pontiff, teach us to realize what divine truth is, and how error can never create prescription against her rights. Then shall we submit to the unhappy necessities handed down to us by the fatal triumph of heresy, without accepting, as a sign of progress, the principle and law that ‘all religions are on an equality.’ In thy prison, brave martyr, thou didist proclaim the rights of the one only Church; preserve us who are living during that revolt which was foretold by the Apostle, from those cowardly compromises, dangerous prejudices, and culpable want of solid instruction, which are the ruin of so many souls; and may our last words, on leaving this world, be those that were taught us by our Jesus himself: Heavenly Father! Hallowed be thy Name! May thy Kingdom come! (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, pp. 619-620.)

Conclusion:

As May Nears An End, We Continue to Rely Upon Our Lady and Her Fatima Message

Although the end of the month of May is but three days away, this is still the month of Our Lady, who appeared to Jacinta and Francisco Marto and Lucia dos Santos in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, for the first time on May 13, 1917. Our trust in Our Lady must be one of childlike simplicity, and our cooperation with the graces won for us by her Divine Son by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow through her own most loving hands as the Mediatrix of All Graces must be persevering.

We have nothing to fear from the circumstances of the world nor from the double-mindedness of the likes of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Our sins, of course, deserve no better, which is why we must, as the consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, seeking to live more penitentially so that we do indeed strive for the ideal of Catholic moral life, relying upon the graces Our Lady sends us to avoid the stultifying legalistic minimalism that helped to produce the current ecclesiastical crisis.

We must plant the seeds for true change, the restoration of the Church Militant on earth and thus of the Social Reign of Christ the King, by doing what we can in our own lives to fulfill Our Lady's Fatima Message as we seek all contact with the revolutionaries who have devastated the Faith.

We can plant the change for true change, that is, of a conversion of all men and their nations to the Catholic Faith, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order, by relying upon Our Lady just as Saint Peter did.

What are we waiting for?

Our Lady is waiting to help us.

Why do we tarry to trust in her loving care?

Why do refuse to believe that the path out of this mess runs through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart?

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us. 

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Bede the Venerable, pray for us.

Pope Saint John I, pray for us.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury, pray for us.